


Constant

by mag_and_mac



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorder, Depression, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father-Son Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Iron Dad, Irondad, NOT STARKER - Freeform, Peter Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Spidey son, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, because ew, just a great father/son relationship, no starker, spider son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-15 22:19:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15422826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mag_and_mac/pseuds/mag_and_mac
Summary: For every scientific trial there has to be a constant. Sometimes Peter has trouble finding them.





	1. Chapter 1

He did not like the air. It fooled him with the illusion of presence. It had been there for him since he was born, allowing him to run, play, and live. But it abandoned him at his worst. It was inconstant. The moment his anxiety got the better of him it would suck itself out of his lungs leaving him to grasp at his throat with blue lips and a tortured mind.

He liked the color orange. It was constant. It was like sun. He knew it would rise and set every day, and he knew he could see it from his patio or from the top of the empire state building. It was like the little bottle of pills he kept rolled up in a sock in his nightstand. A pill bottle was constant. It could not abandon him on his weakest nights, leaving him alone and confused. It did anything but, actually, often coaxing him nearer and nearer to it when he was broken, offering him a hug and a promise of peace.

Peter was a man of science. He did not know what it was like to feel confused. He knew what he did not like, and what he liked. What worked and what didn’t. Or, at least, he liked to know. He did not know if he liked Tony Stark. Mr. Stark was always there for him, in the end. He was a stable thing, not willing to crumble on him like the building Vulture threw on him. But, when he knew nobody wanted him there or the orange little bottle was looking just a bit too appealing, he was not present to assure him that he was needed. _Wanted._

As he sat on a roof with his phone in one hand and the bottle in the other and the air anywhere but his lungs, Tony Stark was not there. He was not constant. But, he was not absent, either. He was inconsistent. Inconsistent data was confusing. He could not pull enough proof from any side of the data to prove or disprove his hypothesis. So he had no answer.

Peter was a man of science.

He would not go without the answers. 

Tony had given Peter his personal number after Germany. He said Peter could call him if he ever needed him. He promised presence. _Constant._ But Peter had never called him. He was too afraid of Tony being too busy. Too important. Tony had never initiated the contact, either. Never checked on ‘his’ kid. _Confusing._

It is not as though Tony couldn’t know. Karen kept logs on everything about Peter. Mr. Stark would have known that Peter malnourished because he could not find it within himself to eat more than a bit of celery when the world became spotty and his knees became as weak as the rest of him. He would have known that his undernourishment dulled his enhanced healing, so the mysterious lacerations on his thighs and wrists were not disappearing. He should have known. Could have if he cared. (He did care. One might think it was about Peter, but the kid knew the truth. Tony Stark could not afford to lose the multi-million dollar suit.)

He supposes he was a bit inconsistent now. Peter of two years ago would have never waited months before beginning to entertain the idea of calling Tony Stark on his personal number. He would have had his phone in his hand minutes after he had received the number, texting to check that he had not been pranked. But Peter was gone. Or, he would be once he had answers.

His right hand fumbled to press call while his left thumb stroked the cap of the pill bottle reassuringly.

And he waited.

And waited.

And tears stung his eyes as he realized he had been tricked. Why would Tony Stark give a teenager his personal number? (Even though he had seemed so genuinely protective of Peter, he could see through it. Inconstant.) He was not there to give him answers. He had been so stupid. But, he was always stupid. That was a constant.

“Hello?” The voice did not sound tired. He must’ve been working on a suit.

He was there now. Confusing.

“Kid, it’s two in the morning. Go to bed.”

He had forgotten how much he had liked Mr. Stark’s voice. It was always warm and relaxed with an air of sarcasm and worry. It was constant.

“You’re awake.” His tone did not give a clue as to whether the teenager was calling him a hypocrite or if it was pure relief.

“Yep. What’s up?”

Peter did not like to avoid the inevitable. Too many things could happen in the time wasted. Confusing.

“If I told you I’m about to overdose and jump off of a building, what would you do?”

There was a rustle on the line. It sounded like a tool clattered to the ground and Tony let out an elegant, “What the _fuck_ -”


	2. Chapter 2

Peter supposed he was stupid. Not that he was an idiot, per se; He had a scholarship to a school for the academically gifted to prove that he wasn’t, but he was somewhat forgetful. There was always something he missed. He had never particularly excelled in algebra because he always forgot to switch the signs. He was no longer allowed grocery shopping after one too many times forgetting to milk. He had forgotten that Tony Stark was Iron Man and would come to find him before he could kill himself.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Stark,” He hastily added to deter Tony from trying to find him before he could follow through with his plan, “I’ll tell Karen to get you the coordinates of where I am after I jump so you can come to get the suit.”

Tony said nothing, which unnerved Peter. He was never silent. Both of them had the unfortunate habit of not being able to shut the fuck up.

“Mister Stark, did you hear me? I told you I'd leave the suit-”

“Kid, to be honest, I don’t give a shit and a half about the suit.” 

It was Peter’s turn to be lost for words as he muttered a quiet, “O-oh.”

He could hear his mentor pinching the bridge of his nose. “Where are you? Why did you disable the tracker?”

Peter looked up at the stars. He liked the stars. They were a rare enough sight in New York, and when he died on Titan, he couldn’t see the stars, a swirling orange sand too opaque for him to see more than a couple of metres in front of him. He hadn’t liked orange much, back then. Or death. He enjoyed to thinking about both of those things now, though.

“So you don’t want me to leave the suit?” He asked, rubbing his forearm and suppressing a wince at the dull pain. There was nobody to see him grimace, but he still chose to hide it because Tony had a weird knack for reading him, and he didn’t want to test how well it would work over the phone.

“Pete,” Tony whispered, “I don’t want your suit.”

“Oh. Uh, I’m sorry, Mister Stark.”

“Don’t be. Where are you?”

“Is fifteen storeys enough? I’m not sure how it would work with my healing factor. That’s why I’m taking the pills, too. But then, my metabolism is so fast-”

“God, Peter, you aren’t going to die!”

There was silence on both ends until Peter broke it after a couple of seconds. “So I need a higher building?”

“Wha-? No!”

Tony usually thought his ideas were pretty good, and even when he didn’t, he never outright said ‘no'. He kept doing it at that moment, though, which aggravated Peter. Things were always changing, and he could never catch up. Nothing was constant.

Peter bit his tongue, and tears pricked his eyes. From the pain or irritation, he didn’t know. “ _Why_ , Mr. Stark?”

Something pinged on the other end of the phone call, and Tony answered with a simple, “Stay put, I’m coming to get you.”

To Peter, it sounded like he was a kid who had gotten lost from his mother and Mr. Stark was the one coming to get him. He was always treated like a kid. Like a child. A stupid, insolent child. That was constant. Tony did it, May did it, his teachers did it.

It confused him. It was constant; He should enjoy it, but it infuriated him to no end. It was never-changing, like Mister Stark’s voice. Except for then. During the conversation they had been having, the anxiety that always tinted the back of his words had overpowered the collected calamity of his usual voice.

He had only heard him sound so worried on a number of occasions that he could count on one hand, one of which being Titan.

“I don’t want you to come to get me.” He begged.

“Well, I’m going to.”

“No. No. I- I don’t want that.”

“And I don’t want you to die. One of us doesn’t get to have what they want.”

Peter fumbled with his phone to turn it on speaker and set it on the ground. The little bottle of pills was still in his hand, and he used his other one to twist the cap gently. He kept the bottle as straight as possible to reduce the rattling noise and quickly poured them all into his mouth.

He liked to dry swallow his pills. He hadn’t always done that, but when he was little and had a fever, his father used to give him a small tablet, and if he swallowed it without water, the older man used to clap him on the back and congratulate him for ‘taking his medicine like a man’.

“I’m- I’m sorry, Mr. Stark.”

“Don’t say that.” He heard Tony's voice above a machine whirring to life. He had forgotten that his death on Titan took a more significant toll on his mentor than either of them liked to admit.

Peter could not think of a way to reply, so he hung the call up.

He looked down at the street. He had always liked New York. Just as he liked the stars. Where the constellations weren’t present, the ever-twinkling street lamps and headlights were. They were always there. Constant.

When he first became Spider-Man, he remembers how terrified he was. He was always hesitant due to his suppressed fear of falling. Now, though, the inconstant boy he was decided to relish in the feeling of his stomach flipping inside out, of his heartbeat in his ears, his eyes trained on the fast approaching ground.

Usually, he caught himself. That night, he carefully laid his web-slingers on the roof beside his neatly folded suit. He didn’t want to change his mind in the middle of his free-fall, shoot a web, and become a failure at yet another task.

He liked the twinkling lights. As he fell, he decided he liked them even better up close.

He did not like he cracks his ribs made as he was intercepted by a red blur going at the speed of sound.

He would have preferred the sound against the pavement.

But he looked up at the emotionless gold of his mentor’s mask and immediately felt dizzy.

He had forgotten how hard his death on Titan had hit Tony. He had forgotten that neither of them wanted that again.

Until now. Everything was different than it had been before. Now he preferred the blue sky of noon to the deep scarlet of sunset. Now the sound of snapping was no longer rhythmic and fun. Everything was different, and he was struggling to catch up.

But, as Tony set him down on a rooftop, something between anger, relief, and worry painting his gaze, he realized that it didn’t matter if the world was changing without him. Some things were always there. Even if his life fell apart at the seams, or he was top of his class at MIT, some things would always be there.

He was stupid. Not dumb, per se. But forgetful. He had forgotten that things didn’t need to be dull or smart, tragic or hilarious, constant or inconstant. He had forgotten that some things just were.

Some things like Tony Stark.


End file.
